The Silence of the Lambs
by Darkly Dreaming
Summary: Super Scary (Or Not) Halloween Challenge! Doctor Sheldon Cooper and Penny are Doctor Hannibal Lecter and FBI Agent Clarice Starling in this take on the iconic jail scene from Silence of the Lambs.


Much of this was taken from the book and movie verbatim, and some imagery was taken from the movie, but hopefully I changed enough of it to make it something of my own. I wish I could come up with a better serial killer name than "Pasadena Psycho." This is my favorite scene from my favorite movie. I might expand on it, but likely not any time soon.

* * *

The top of the Gothic-reminiscent tower was octagonal, all white paint and polished oak. Penny had the distinct feeling it looked better now than it had even when new.

Two Las Vegas Department of Corrections uniforms were stationed in the room, one standing by the desk and the other in a folding chair on the other side of the room. Suicide watch, Penny assumed. Not needed with Dr. Cooper; he valued his own life far too much to ever end it prematurely.

"You authowized to talk with the pwisoner, ma'am?" the officer at the desk asked. His nameplate read KRIPKE, B.A. and his desk set included a landline, two riot batons, and Chemical Mace.

"Yes," Penny said. "I've questioned him before"

"You know the wules? Don't pass the bawwier."

"Absolutely."

The only color in the room was the brightly striped yellow and orange police traffic barrier. It stood five feet in front of the cell door, flashers off. On a coat tree nearby hung the doctor's things - the hockey mask and something Penny had never seen before in person, a Kansas gallows vest. Made of heavy leather, with double-locking wrist shackles at the waist and buckles in the back, it may be the most infallible restraint garment in the world. The mask and black vest suspended by its nape from the coat tree made a disturbing contrast against the stark white wall. Very _Friday the 13th_.

Dr. Cooper was reading at a small table bolted to the floor, his back to the door. He had a small number of books and the copy of the running file on the Pasadena Psycho she had given him in LA. It was strange seeing him outside of the asylum.

Penny had seen cells like this in movies but hadn't thought they'd ever be used as a monster's waystation. Ten square feet of concrete about two feet thick with cold-forged steel bars embedded near the edges, giving the Gothic-styled room a distinctly Old West jail feel, except that it was situated in the exact center of the room.

"Good evening, Penny," he greeted without turning around. He heard her approach, of course, could hear her speaking to the desk officer, but he could also smell her green apple shampoo. He came to a stopping point, marked his spot, and spun in his chair to face her, forearms on the back of the chair, chin resting on them.

"I thought you might like your drawings back, Doctor," she said as she reached over the traffic barrier and laid them next to the bars. "Just unitl you get your view."

"How very thoughtful," he said with a straight face. His face almost never showed outward signs of emotion. They say the eyes are the window to the soul, and that holds true for Dr. Sheldon Cooper. While his facial expressions tend toward the Darth Vader t-shirt, his eyes express more than words ever could. "Or did Eric Gablehauser send you for one last wheedle before you're both booted off the case?" He quirked an eyebrow when he said 'wheedle.' A jab at Penny. He'd believed her lies about a transfer and felt the sting of that betrayal, but he wouldn't let it show.

Penny sidestepped slightly closer. "No, I came because I wanted to."

Dr. Cooper narrowed his eyes the slightest bit, as though he were smiling. "People will say we're in love."

"Your anagrams are showing, Dr. Cooper," she said, pacing outside the cage. "Louis Friend? Iron sulfide? Fool's Gold. The press ate it up, of course. Vultures. You were telling me the truth back in LA. Please continue."

Sitting up once more, Dr. Cooper entered lecture mode. "I've read the case files, Penny. Have you? Everything you need to know is right there, if you're paying attention. Even good old Gablehauser should have figured it out."

"Tell me how."

"Occam's Razor," he said. "Oftentimes, the simplest conclusion is the best. The more assumptions one has to make in order to lend credence to a theory, the less likely it is to be correct. Simplicity is key. The Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius stated, of each particular thing, ask: 'What is it in itself?' 'What is it's nature?' What does he do, this man you seek?"

Drawn in by his voice, Penny doesn't blink as he speaks. At his question she whispers,  
"He kills women."

"No," he draws out the word. "That is incidental. What is the first and principle thing he does? What _needs_ does he serve by killing?"

Penny, now more than a little bit frustrated that she's not getting it, grinds out her words. "Anger? Social acceptance? Sexual frus-"

"No."

She clenches a fist. "What, then?"

"He covets," Dr. Cooper answers with a nod, as though conceding something. "In fact he covets having the very thing you are. It's his nature to covet. To want what he does not or cannot have. Only once he has it does he destroy it."

"But why?" she asked.

"Irrelevant," he replied. "How do we begin to covet, Penny? Do we seek things out to covet? Make an effort at an answer, now."

"No. We just-"

"No, precisely," he truly smiled now, and it was appraising instead of terrifying, as she thought it might be. "We begin by coveting what we see every day. As an aesthetically pleasing female you must be familiar with others' eyes roaming your person in chance encounters. I hardly see how you could not." He leaned forward. "And don't your eyes seek out the things you want?"

Penny's mouth felt dry. Dr. Cooper was trying to steer her to a point but she just wasn't seeing it. He was too intense and it was blocking more important thought processes. "Ok, yes, now please tell me how."

"No." He leaned back in his desk chair once more and steepled his fingers, elbows resting on the arms.

"No?"

"It is your turn to tell me, Penny," he stipulated. "You don't have any more 'vacations' to sell. Why did you leave Nebraska?"

"Doctor, we don't have time for this now," she insisted, avoiding the question.

Dr. Cooper smirked. "But we don't calculate time the same way, do we Penny? Time is not linear, and this is all the time you and I wil ever have, I believe."

"Later, listen, I'll-"

"No," he interjected. "I'll listen _now_. Two years after your father's death your mother sent you to live with cousins on a sheep and horse ranch while she went into a rehabilitation center, as you were the youngest and not yet capable of living on your own. You were seventeen years old. You had descovered they fed out slaughter horses. You ran away with a horse that couldn't see very well. And?"

Seeing no way out, Penny rushed through in a low voice. "It was summer and we could sleep out. We barely got halfway to Lincoln before a highway patrolman caught up with us." Penny thought it was remarkably unsettling how long Dr. Cooper could go without blinking.

"Did the horse have a name?"

Penny tried to keep the eye contact, knew she couldn't truly look away from his sparking blue eyes, deep and dangerous as whirlpools, but discomfort and anxiety made them flutter as she murmured, "Probably, but - they don't...you don't get names for...slaughter horses. I called her Hannah."

"What made you run away with _Hannah_?" The doctor made sure to put emphasis on the name.

"They were going to kill her."

"Did you know when?"

"Not exactly," she shook her head slightly, still unable to break his gaze. "I worried about it all the time. She was getting pretty fat."

Anyone else wouldn't have seen it but Penny had been staring at him for a while now and noticed the minute muscle spasms that influenced facial expressions. Dr. Cooper tried very hard to hide the outward signs of his interest in her young life and continued to speak insistently, yet clinically.

"What triggered you then? What specific event set you off on that particular day?"

Feeling the crunch of time pass her by, she finally managed to rip her eyes from his in order to glance at the uniforms by the desk. One was rifling through a newspaper while the suicide watch kept a dutiful eye on them from afar. Penny bet neither of them felt the pressure of time as harshly as she did just now. The senator's granddaughter had maybe days now, if the Psycho's pattern kept up. The sooner Dr. Cooper told her what she needed to know the better.

"Early," she choked out. "Still dark."

"Then something woke you." He practically lounged in his desk chair but his eyes cut right to her soul. "What woke you, Penny? Did you dream? What was it?"

"Scre-" she tried, but her voice caught. It wasn't something she liked to remember, and that's exactly why Dr. Cooper wanted to hear her say it. She tried again. "Screaming, like a child's voice. The lambs were being slaughtered. I woke up in the dark and the lambs were screaming." The words came out low and raspy. Her eyes misted and her heartbeat sounded in her ears.

"What did you do?" Dr. Cooper's eyes narrowed a fraction, barely noticable. Penny noticed. She suspected she'd notice everything right now.

"I couldn't do anything for them. I was just a-"

"What did you do with _Hannah_?"

"I got up," she swallowed heavily. She could barely maintain eye contact now, her eyes flitting across his face, nervously flicking over to the local cops, feeling like an escape was needed, but unable to leave without her information. "I dressed in the dark and went outside, to the barn. All the horses were scared. I blew in her nose and she knew it was me. I led her away."

Dr. Cooper's eyes seemed to revel in her anxiety and he leaned forward again. "You still wake up sometimes, don't you? Wake up in the dark with the lambs screaming?"

"Sometimes." Once again his eyes held hers unblinking, as though the slight shift in distance drew the connection taut again.

"You think that if you catch the big bad wolf, if you save the girl, you can make them stop, don't you? You think that if she lives, you won't wake up in the dark ever again to that awful screaming of the lambs?"

"I don't know," Penny breathed out. "I don't know."

"Thank you, Penny. Thank you." Dr. Cooper seemed oddly at peace.

"Tell me his name, Doctor."

The sound of a heavy door opening echoed throughout the quiet room. Dr. Cooper blinked a few times, scenting the air. "Dr. Fowler, I presume? I think you know each other."

Dr. Fowler, the head of the asylum that previously housed Dr. Cooper, strode up to Penny with an air of self-importance.

"Ok, let's go."

Penny ignored her. "It's your turn, Doctor. Tell me his name."

Officer Kripke, holding her jacket and effects left at the entrance, tried to lead her away from Cooper. "Sowwy, ma'am, I've got orders to put you on a pwane. Come on." He and the other officer gently grabbed her elbows and led her away, Dr. Fowler following.

Dr. Cooper finally stood, in order to see her out, his southern gentleman manners keeping him polite. "Brave Penny. You will let me know when those lambs stop screaming, won't you?"

At this point it was either go with them or fight. She looked over her shoulder. "Yes. Yes, I'll tell you."

"Penny!" he called, and her heart skipped a beat. "Take your case file with you, Penny, I won't need it anymore." Nearly pressed up against the bars, Dr. Cooper held the thick file at arms length, his index finger on the spine. She broke away from the uniforms and reached across the traffic barrier and took it. For an instant the tip of her forefinger touched Dr. Cooper's and she could see it crackle in his cerulean eyes.

"Thank you, Penny."

"Thank you, Dr. Cooper."

And that is how he remained in Penny's mind; caught in the instant when he did not mock. Standing in his brightly lit old west cell, tall and proud, hands clasped behind him and his chin up.


End file.
